Digging Deeper: An Adventure Novel (Sam Harris Series Book 1) by PJ Skinner Page A

must have occurred to more than one of the police how easy it would have been to kill everyone and run off with the safe.  She hoped the escorts were changed regularly so they never got friendly enough to plot together.
    They roared through the town, blasting their horn and being thrown about in the jeep by the big potholes.  Dogs, pigs and chickens scattered before them.  People shook their fists at the convoy.  It all called attention to the fact that there was a couple of million dollars-worth of diamonds in the jeep.
    It was also quite pointless, as the diamond pickers in the sort house were local men.  They knew when an export to Mondongo was planned, so MARFO must have known, too.  She found it chilling that they would be happy to shoot down the Gemsite plane and kill everyone inside it to get the cargo.
    The men from SDM had arrived on a special flight from Mondongo, and the plane sat on the runway with its engines running, waiting to take them all back to the capital with the diamonds.  It was a nice change from Sam’s last experience with TransTamazia.  The car drove up to the back of the aircraft and they were ushered straight up the back steps with the safe.
    They would leave immediately for Mondongo.  The men from SDM were solicitous of Sam’s well-being.  First, they ushered her to her seat and strapped her in.  Then, after the plane took off, they gave her a tin of a fizzy pineapple drink.  She was about to drink it when she was given a small soft package wrapped in tissue paper.  Unwrapping revealed a small whole fish, lying there cold and grilled with his mouth open in protest.  Sam did not want the fish, but her good manners meant that she could not refuse it.  She ate it, picking the off the flesh and avoiding the copious bones and the intestines.  It was delicious and she wished it had been bigger.
    After an hour and a half of ear-splitting engine noise, the plane landed at Mondongo. The passengers were all whisked off the aircraft into a large four-wheel-drive vehicle.   The diamond safe was loaded into a small security van in front of them.  There was a pickup truck full of heavily-armed soldiers in front of it and another behind them.  All four vehicles had removable sirens on their roofs.  These were switched on, and the convoy took off at high speed on a wave of sound heading through the chaotic streets of Mondongo for the National Bank of Tamazia.
    They mounted pavements, barged traffic off the road, shot guns in the air and in Sam’s opinion, called attention to the fact that they had two million dollars-worth of diamonds in the convoy. Why not sell tickets? The convoy got separated a couple of times from the front truck of soldiers by cars crossing in front of them.  Sam knew that any of these separations could have been set-ups but she tried to ignore the traffic and focus on getting to the bank by holding on to the seat in front of her.
    ‘Are you scared?’ asked Eduardo, the man flagged up by Jim.
    ‘Scared?  Of course not,’ said Sam. ‘How could I be afraid with five tough bodyguards looking after me?  I couldn’t be safer.’
    They all beamed at her complement. 
    ‘The men of Tamazia will protect you.  We are the best.’
    She beamed back.  There was no point being a girl in a man’s world if you did not know how to pull it off.
    They drove up to the back door of the bank.  The safe was taken inside and disappeared from view.
    ‘Come with me, Sam,’ said Eduardo, ‘we have to get you an identity card so that you can enter the diamond area.’  He set off to the front of the bank.
    ‘But what about the diamonds?’ said Sam.  ‘Aren’t I supposed to watch the handover?’
    ‘Don’t you trust us?’
    She blushed and followed him around the outside of the bank.  They went to the   front reception desk of the bank, a process that only took ten minutes but seemed to last an eternity.  They headed though the bank to the diamond area.  By the time